


Les marguerites fleuriront ce soir

by Lunatique (lunafana)



Category: 20th Century RPF, World War II RPF
Genre: F/M, French Resistance, World War 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:59:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7544155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunafana/pseuds/Lunatique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an Allied air drop goes wrong Virginia and her Maquis spend a much more exciting night than they had expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Les marguerites fleuriront ce soir

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/gifts).



> This story draws its facts and inspiration primarily from _The Wolves at the Door,_ the 2005 biography of Virginia Hall by Judith L. Pearson.

“ _Les marguerites fleuriront ce soir._ ” The daisies will bloom tonight. Virginia turned her entire attention to the combination of numbers and letters her portable radio spat out. Edmond LeBrat next to her pumped the stripped-down bicycle pedals chain with his hands to keep a steady supply of power going through the radio's generator.

Once the message was over she turned to the gathered group while Edmond put the generator away. “There’s going to be an air drop tonight.”

“What’s the drop? Weapons? Bombs?” asked Lieutenant Bob, as they called Lieutenant Raoul Le Boulicaut.

“I could use more of those chocolates and wines from last time,” said Désiré Zurbach, or Dédé.

“You could be getting your wish, boys. There are five containers coming in—and two Americans.”

As the men speculated what this could mean for their Resistance operations against the Germans, Virginia privately hoped the dropped containers would also hold the kind of care package her old British colleagues would slip into the drops. She always welcomed extra socks to help her with Cuthbert, not to mention good tea.

As it was, given the nationality of the human cargo that would be flying in, this drop was likely from her native country. At least she hoped the American arrivals would be interesting.

  


She and the reception committee were waiting at the field outside Villelonge designated for the drop, keeping an eye and an ear out for Germans or collaborators. As soon as she heard the plane coming Virginia flashed the night’s code letter, R, in Morse code. Lieutenant Bob, Dédé, and Edmond stood behind her and to the sides in diamond formation, the glow of their lights illuminating the flat lands and surrounding woods in soft red. From the air the pilot should be able to make the drop aiming for the center of the diamond.

The dark outline of the plane came into sight against the moonlit sky, and the hum of its engine came nearer and nearer. Virginia tensed, waiting for the bloom of parachutes in the night sky.

The plane glided right overhead, however, and was soon out over the surrounding woods. Virginia raised binoculars to her eyes and cursed when she saw the chutes opening over the canopy of trees. The group followed with their eyes as the cargo, human and otherwise, drifted down into the woods.

Virginia lowered her binoculars. “That’s about fifteen miles away, I’d say. Damn these Americans!” This wasn’t the first time an American plane had bungled a drop, and it was particularly unforgivable in this case when human lives were in the mix.

“Let’s go pick them up, then!” Dédé ran for one of their waiting vehicles. “First dibs on the chocolates.”

Virginia shook her head an jogged to the benzene-burning Citroën with the others. The car sped through the trees with no lights on, jostling her against Edmond.

“We’re liable to break our necks in the dark.” Her voice hitched as the car jumped on a terrific bump in the path. “Or run into Germans.”

“That’s our ray of sunshine.” Lieutenant Bob braced himself against a window as the car swerved around a tree that loomed up out of the dark.

Virginia considered putting a stop to the nonsense then and there. There was little sense in stumbling around in the dark begging to run into an obstacle and suffer a spectacular crash, or risking a firefight with soldiers or collaborators. They could wait until morning to make the search.

On the other hand, she had no idea of the conditions of the men who had made the drop. If they were injured they would need help, and if hostile forces really were in the area they could be picked up or killed.

She looked at her comrades, the Maquis she had armed and trained these past months, laughing now and arguing about which routes to take. They knew the area better than she could hope to, and on some level they needed this.

 _Let them have this._ She relaxed back into her seat, or rather was thrown back when the car sped down a slope. With any luck her gloomy predictions would be wrong.

  


She startled awake to the rattle of gunfire. She looked around, not remembering having fallen asleep. Trees rushed by on either side and there was no more laughter in the car. The Maquis had pulled their carbines and rifles and looked ahead with deadly intensity, searching for the source of the sound.

“There!” Virginia pointed out the bursts of light in a clearing up ahead. Illuminated in that instant by the sparks of gunfire and the waning moon, a lone man in a U.S. flight suit fired back across the clearing.

“ _Milice._ ” Edmond bared his teeth toward the men firing at the U.S. servicemember. The fascist paramilitary gangs who acted on behalf of the German occupiers were as hated on the Yssingeaux Plateau as they were elsewhere in France.

The Citroën bore down on the knot of firing Milice with a speed that rattled Virginia’s teeth and grated the stump of her leg against Cuthbert’s smooth wooden surface. By the time the fascists had trained their guns away from the American and at the car, the front bumper had slammed into one of them with a lurch that shook everyone inside. Before the screaming died away Virginia ducked out the door with Lieutenant Bob and Dédé, her sten gun trained on the three Milice left standing.

“Drop your weapons! Put up your hands, now!” She aimed the sten’s barrel at the Milice to the left. He did. She checked out the corner of an eye to make sure all the enemy combatants were covered and no surprises lurked nearby. She tensed at approaching movement, then recognized the U.S. flight suit. Leaving Bob and Dédé to cover the prisoners, she turned to the newcomer.

“So good to see you. Lieutenant Henry Riley.” The tall American extended a hand. 

“Call me Diane. It’s a good thing we came when we did.” She took his hand and gave it a shake, trying to adjust to speaking English to a human face again. These days even her dreams were in French. “I heard there were two of you making the drop.”

“I was searching for him, and then these trigger-happy clowns showed and I was drawing fire away from his location.”

“Do you know where he is, then?”

“I heard him answer from north, maybe three hundred yards away. I was going to fetch him when I was waylaid, ma’am.”

Other cars were arriving and their occupants took over the prisoners. She strode up to one of the Milice. “Are there more of you in the area?”

“Slut, I’m not telling you a damned-“

She thrust the barrel of her sten against his face. “I’m sorry, I meant to say: Are there more of you in the area?”

“Y-yes!” The man’s face grew pale and his eyes huge.

She turned north where Lieutenant Riley had pointed. “Let’s go, and be quiet about it. They could have scattered, but we can’t count on it.”

She caught Dédé’s eye and waved him over. The two of them and Lieutenant Riley made their way out of the clearing with the moon at their backs, scanning the undergrowth with their eyes. There was the occasional movement that they took aim at, but turned out to be wind or wildlife.

They had gone another two hundred yards or so before Virginia tapped Lieutenant Riley on a shoulder. “Try calling him again.”

“Hey Paul!” Riley’s call was somewhere between a stage whisper and a hiss. “You there, buddy?”

“Yeah, try to hurry, I’m-“ was it her imagination, or did this Paul sound a little like…

A burst of gunfire drowned out the rest of his words. Virginia dove for cover and looked for the threat. While Dédé and Lieutenant Riley exchanged fire with the hidden gunman, she turned the words she had just heard over in her mind: _Try to hurry._ This American, Paul, was in no condition to come to them; perhaps he was wounded or trapped, or both. And if the Milice pinning them down here had any more friends within earshot, they knew at least as much of his location as she and her party did.

She did a visual check of her comrades’ positions: The other two were trapped behind a log and a tree a distance from a thick copse of trees that Paul’s voice had come from, while she herself behind her rock cover was a scant two meters away from the edge of the trees. She took a breath, fired a burst to deter any shooters, then threw herself into the thick of the trees.

She broke into a run in the direction she had heard the American’s voice, adopting the swinging gait she had perfected since the accident and being fitted with her wooden leg. She wove between the trees, listening for footfalls and gunfire. A patch of clear ground came up ahead and, across it, moonlight glinted on the muzzle of a gun.

No time to think, she thrust herself back the way she came and behind a tree. Bullets thudded into its bark, and she had to convince herself she was feeling the force through contact with the pine at her back and not on her body.

Leaning around her tree she fired back, counting down the remaining rounds in her head. _Twenty-seven, twenty-six…_

A burst of eight rounds in rapid succession cut through the exchange, followed by the rustling drop of something heavy in the underbrush. Virginia strained her entire being, listening, scanning, smelling for more threats, but other than the remains of gunpowder in the air the night wood was still. _Lieutenant Bob,_ she thought, _Dédé. Please be all right._

“All’s clear, you did me a good one there friend.” There! The American did sound faintly French, something she had thought was just her imagination.

He also sounded like he was nine feet tall, if the direction of his voice was any indication.

She came around the tree and into the clearing, checking that the man in the underbrush was down and unmoving and alone. She then scanned the area for threats and for the American soldier.

“Up here, fella- I mean, madame.”

Virginia looked up to a strange sight: A man outlined against the moonlit sky, hanging by his legs upside-down from a tree. He hugged a rifle to himself, the source of the semiautomatic fire that had ended the firefight. She had seen American troops with the Garands when she was training stateside with the Operation of Special Services.

She turned at the approach of people through the undergrowth, relaxed when she recognized the voices of her Maquis. “Diane! Diane?”

“Over here, and I’ve found our American.”

They filed out of the trees, still wary themselves, Lieutenant Bob, Edmond, Dédé and Lieutenant Riley.

“Well that’s a strange bird you’ve caught.” Dédé looked up at the soldier in the tree.

“Lieutenant Paul Goillot, reporting.” The upside-down American said in French, touching a hand to his forehead in a salute. “I seem to have misplaced my cap.”

“I’ll cut you right down. Lucky it wasn’t your neck the ropes got around.” Lieutenant Riley threw himself onto the trunk of the tree his comrade was in, with Edmond following to assist.

It took much rustling around, near misses, and multiple swear words while Virginia and the Maquis stood watch on the ground, but finally Lieutenant Goillot was out of the tree and on his feet again. He swayed a few moments, no doubt adjusting to the blood rushing away from his head, before he greeted the men and approached her.

He was not nine feet tall. A few inches shorter than her own five-foot-seven, he was built like a gymnast with strength coiled in the muscles of his shoulders and waist. This pleased her, and then she chided herself for the reaction.

“I wanted to thank you. He would have had me fore sure, trussed as I was, if you hadn’t drawn his fire away.” Speaking in French, Lieutenant Goillot nodded toward the motionless body in the bushes. “I owe you one, Madame-“

“Hall. Virginia Hall.” Heat crept up her face that she hoped would be invisible in the moonlight. What was she thinking, blurting out her real name like that? “Welcome to Villelonge.”

Taking stock of their surroundings the group headed back to the cars, to look for the missing supply containers in the morning. The night had seen more action than usual, but Virginia could be grateful that it had ended without casualties on the side of the Resistance. She watched the men talking and laughing among themselves, their new American arrivals fitting right in with the camaraderie of men who had risked their lives together, and felt the warmth of a job well done.

**Author's Note:**

> As those who read Pearson's book or are otherwise well-acquainted with Hall's story would have noticed, this wasn't how it happened at all. I'll do a fuller "what's wrong with this picture" postmortem after the author reveal, but in the meantime I hope the story was enjoyable despite my fudging of the facts!


End file.
